


Fireworks

by Tintinnabulation_of_the_Bells



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 14:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6427189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tintinnabulation_of_the_Bells/pseuds/Tintinnabulation_of_the_Bells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only one person had ever dared ask to ask out loud the question she knew many more had thought: if it had been George who’d died that terrible night rather than Fred, would she have married Fred?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fireworks

Only one person had ever dared ask to ask out loud the question she knew many more had thought: if it had been George who’d died that terrible night rather than Fred, would she have married Fred?

It was Alicia who asked the question, and because it was Alicia, Angelina’s best friend since first year, she didn’t hack her head off the way she might have, say, Oliver Wood’s. She never needed much of an excuse to hack of Wood’s head, though, and she doubted that Wood would have ever thought to ask such a question. Even when she had spent dozens of hours a week on the Quidditch pitch with him back in their school days, Wood had never been one to ask about relationships unless said relationship was directly interfering with his beloved Quidditch. Katie was an exception of course, but that was later, after the war, after everything else. The war had hardened many people (her husband included), but it had, in some ways, softened Oliver Wood. Or at least straightened out his priorities.

It wasn’t an entirely unfair question, she decided to herself hours after the resulting argument with Alicia. After all, it was Fred that she had dated (however sporadically) in Hogwarts, Fred who had kissed her and fought her and then kissed her again until eventually they fought one too many times and then Fred and George left Hogwarts and no one had time for dating anymore, what with the war and the real world intruding into any potential romantic exploits. After their last fight, though, the one which followed the Quidditch ban placed on Fred, George and Harry, Angelina decided she and Fred were finished. Alicia doubted her decision at the time, but Angelina knew it to be final. Fred lit up her world like the fireworks he and his brother loved so much, but each time they exploded, the smoke and scorch marks stung. Eventually, the hurt overwhelmed the excitement. 

People who didn’t know her or George as well might have questioned why she could then love George if she couldn’t love Fred. They were born as a pair, they lived as a pair, and even their own mother couldn’t even tell them apart. Angelina was a quick study, and if you knew Fred and George, if you saw them as much as she did every day for five years of her life, little cracks appeared in their identical masks. Like a replica of a painting, their likeness, not matter how great, always surrendered to their differences in the right light.

Between her and Alicia, Angelina was the brash one, the loud, commanding force who tolerated little weakness and demanded excellence. It was why she, not Alicia, captained the Quidditch team their seventh year, and also why she and Wood had clashed so frequently. Wood too, expected excellence, but their methods differed and neither was willing to back down. Alicia, though certainly a fierce competitor in her own right, never shared the same intensity and boldness. She always acted as the voice of reason to Angelina, placing a hand on her shoulder when Angelina burned too hot and remaining calm in the face of her considerable temper. Early on in their second year, Chloe, one of the other girls in Gryffindor in her year, asked Angelina when she and Oliver were going to date. Angelina had snorted. The answer, of course, was never. Angelina and Oliver were too similar in some ways, different in all the wrong ones. Their love of Quidditch united them then, and their love of Katie did so now, but Angelina and Oliver would have been worse than her and Fred—all anger, all single-minded focus and inability to see beyond each other’s flaws. Katie’s quiet intensity, in contrast, seemed to both satiate Wood’s need for someone as passionate as him and balance his tendency towards obsession. Angelina never had the patience.  
Fred and George resembled Angelina and Alicia in some ways. When Fred got out of hand, it was George who pulled him back. While the twins were both incorrigible tricksters, Fred’s mischievousness always contained a troubling cruel streak. She never thought he intended to truly hurt people, but he also never fully considered the consequences of his actions. Fred started, George ended. Fred exploded, and George gleefully shaped the ensuing fire. As he did so, though, he also stamped out the sparks that threatened true harm to others. She never knew if Fred was aware of the George’s subtle attempts at control. 

She could never, ever tell George, but she was glad that if one of them had to die, it was Fred. In truth, the prospect of a George-less Fred terrified her. A Fred-less George had scared her too, but only because of the staggering depths of his despair and the constant fear that he would try to follow his twin into the abyss. Throughout the hell that followed Fred’s death, through the year of pulling him back from the edge over and over again, sometimes relying on Alicia and Lee and even the other Weasleys but mostly using herself as the anchor, she never once believed he would harm someone else. If George had died, then she would never have trusted Fred in that way. She would never have felt safe. Both twins never epitomized the ideal, rule-abiding student, but George at least hesitated a moment before he jumped into the flames. Without his twin to temper his recklessness, Angelina could envision the ugly consequences of his actions. He would have destroyed himself and all those who dared approach him, Angelina included.

Fred Weasley Jr. wasn’t like his namesake in many ways. For one, he lacked the characteristic Weasley red hair and pale skin, though a smattering of freckles still dusted his dark cheeks. She had never been as grateful for her dark skin as when Fred was born and she realized her son would never physically resemble his late uncle uncle. George would never see his twin in his son the way he still saw Fred whenever he looked in the mirror. More importantly though, she had raised their son to be kind. He was still George’s son, and he and James Potter caused far too many headaches for her liking, but she made sure to impress upon him the importance of forethought, of thinking, even momentarily, of the backlash. Merlin knew she was never perfect, but she understood more than ever the necessity of kindness. 

So when she spoke to Alicia the next day to apologize for her excessively vehement, angry response to the question, she told her the truth. Whether or not George had lived, she never would have married Fred. Fred’s death changed George, hardened him, and it had taken her a full two years to convince him they could work, but the circumstances brought them closer together more rapidly than she could have anticipated. George was everything she loved about Fred but without cruelty, without the casual recklessness. He too loved fireworks, but she knew he loved them for their beauty and not for the explosion.

What she doesn’t tell Alicia, and what she can barely tell herself, is that she doesn’t know what would have happened if both had lived. If George still lived attached to the side of Fred, both incapable of understanding true separation and the pains of loneliness, and if George were still lost in the shadow of her time with Fred, then she might never have found George alone. With Fred so bright, Fred so brash, Fred burning and burning and burning, she might have been consumed. She would never have married Fred, but she would have loved him. She had loved him. She loves George now. George is warm and funny and he keeps his fire under control. 

It's only late at night after her husband and children have fallen asleep that she admits she sometimes misses the scorch marks.


End file.
